Nephi stated that: ‘Men are that they might have joy.’ 2 Nephi 2:25. I have sometimes thought about that scripture and what Nephi might have meant by it. I would never question Nephi’s sincerity or his intellect because Nephi is one of my favorite people in the history of the world. I am not sure that I can distinguish the difference between the human experience of being content, happy and joy, but I will attempt it anyway. I know that we named our only daughter ‘Joy’ with the hope that her name might influence her attitude about life. She is generally quite joyful according to the following dictionary description and I like that definition: “Joy is the deep-down sense of well-being that abides in the heart of the person who knows all is well between himself/herself and the Lord.” That definition would go right along with both Nephi’s statement and what King David said about it in the Psalms: “In thy presence is fullness of joy” Psalms 16:15. I believe contentment is a quiet, satisfied, comfortable feeling. It is a kind of laid back, with nothing in life pressing, right now, feeling. From my gallery point of view, Joy and happiness are a little harder to compare. I am struggling to do this, with thoughts from my own head on those two words, as opposed to a dictionary description. I believe happiness is the base or the foundation for Joy. For me, happiness is a feeling I have when I have my family around close, or at least, within contact distance. When they all seem to be doing well, are going to school, working to provide for themselves, are married and having babies, I feel happy or is it joy. When they have positive attitudes about God and country, and they are not caught up in the world of drugs, alcohol and tobacco, but are honest and straight shooters (a term from the old days, meaning that they are good, honest people).
That is how I would describe happiness, from my point of view, and I don’t think that I am too far off from the way most elderly fathers, grand and even great, and mothers would describe it. Happiness is an individual experience.
Joy, in the dictionary, is attached to happiness. It is a bump in happiness, it jumps up out of happiness. For example, while we are going along happy, as described by fathers, grandfathers etc. all of a sudden, a new baby is born into the family or a marriage is announced. Those are bumps in happiness that are expressed as joy. It could be anything else or any positive surprise that is expected or unexpected even within the family.
Too, I can’t leave out our little animals. They can bring a great deal of happiness into our lives. When a new one is introduced, like a new baby, it is a bump, or Joy.
May God bless us all to not only find happiness in life but hopefully we will have many bumps of joy. There are two kinds of joy that we can we can experience in this life. One is mentioned by Nephi of old: “Man is that he might have joy”. The other is found in the dictionary: “Joy is the deep-down sense of well-being that abides in the heart of the person who knows all is well between himself/herself and the Lord.”
Cleon Skousen wrote a book, The First 2000 Years, that I have read several times and keep going back to, from time to time, for answers to questions about the early days of this earth we live on. This is what he wrote about joy: “This is something we apparently did not have abundantly while in the pre-earth life. The prophet Lehi indicates that unless we had come into this world after the fall and received physical bodies we could not have known the abundance of this rich emotional experience called “Joy”.
Joy is the warm excitable, and thrilling emotion which the body registers in response to conditions which are for its stimulation or welfare. The ‘Tree of Life’, as spoken of in the Book of Mormon, in 1 Nephi, ‘produces a fruit, that when eaten, will fill your soul with joy’. That statement is no more than the acceptance of and the desire to live according to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And, in Alma, we are told ‘if ye will nourish the word, (the Gospel)…by your faith, with great diligence, it shall take root; and behold it shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting life. And because of your diligence, your faith and your patience with the word in nourishing it, …by and by ye shall pluck the fruit thereof, which is most precious, …and pure; and ye shall feast upon this fruit that ye hunger not, neither shall ye thirst. The fruit thereof will fill your soul with exceedingly great joy;’ That, my brethren, is reaping the rewards of your faith. (Faith in the tree of life and/or the Gospel of Jesus Christ, are the same and can produce Joy.) It is the emotional marriage of the mind and the body. For centuries men have tried to manufacture the sensation of joy by artificial means – and failed. Why? Because the spirit alone, or the body alone, is incapable of experiencing joy in its fullness. “Spirit and element (body) inseparably connected receive a fullness of joy” (D&C 93:34) Joy, a fullness thereof, should be what all people strive for.